Question

Identify the issue under investigation, the population, and the sample in the following scenario. Then determine whether or not this sample is likely to be representative of the population.

The Sierra College Campus Parking and Security Services Department wanted to know the percentage of Sierra College students who use the parking lots on the Rocklin campus that feel there is not enough parking spaces on campus.

In order to address their concern, members of the department took positions within parking lots B, C, D, and E on Monday morning from 7:30 am till 8:00 am and asked every 5th student who parked their vehicle in those lots the following question “Do you feel that there is enough parking spaces on campus?”.

Answer 1

In the above-given scenario, the issue if to find the adequacy of the parking space.
Parking space is used by the students. Here, all the students using parking space acts as the population.
The population comprises of every entity and the sample is any or collection of any randomly selected entity from the population.
The method to identify the inadequacy of parking space is not appropriate. These are the following issues in the investigation-
1. The sample is collected on one Monday. The sample collected on a single day cannot precisely be representative of the population using parking space. This should be done for 2 days to get data from the actual information provider.
2. The time for sample collection is from 7:30 AM to 8:00 AM. 30 min is devoted to collecting the sample which is very less. The probability of arrival of maximum students is not covered in these 30 mins.
3. The question asked-“Do you feel that there are enough parking spaces on campus?” is direct which can not yield the desired results. The question- "Do you regularly use parking space?" should also be included for verifying the authenticity of the information provider. One or more relevant questions can be asked for a better and authentic response.
4. The sampling technique used here is systematic sampling, considering every 5th occupant. Random sampling is preferable and can be more precise as there is a chance of data manipulation.

The sample collected is a not very good representative of the population.